Deck Building
'Deck Building' Deck Basics The following rules must be followed when constructing a deck: * A deck is contains EXACTLY 50 cards. * You may only have up to 4 copies of a card with the same name in a deck. * You may only have up to 4 copies of cards with the "Life Recover" text in a deck. * You may only have up to 4 copies of cards with the "Void Bringer" text in a deck. * You must have exactly 20 copies of cards with the "Ignition" icon in the deck. * Player Cards are not counted as part of the 50 card deck. Colour Breakdown As many people have asked what colour does what, here is a breakdown of what each of the colours embodies. This is not definitive as cards will be released that mess with how the colours play and change a few things. 'Red (Damage)' : Red's main focus is on dealing damage to an opponent's Z/X with cards that have "When this card is played, select 1 Z/X in a normal square and deal 3000 damage to it.". 'Green (Resource)' : Green is about resource gathering, many units have abilities that give it a boost if you have a more than a certain amount of cards in resource as well as cards that upon being 'killed' by another Z/X are placed into the resource instead of the charge zone. 'Black (Destruction)' : Black focuses mainly on shooting others Z/X, although there is a small faction which seem to like putting more cards into the charge zone... 'White (Power Up/Down)' : White seems to be the opposite of Red. While Red deal damage, White likes to pump its units up usually with a "+3000 until the end of the turn" effects. Conversely, they can also power other Z/X units down with "-3000 until the end of the turn" effects. 'Blue (Bounce/Draw)' : Blue is a little hard to pin down, Blue seems to excel in both returning your cards from the field to your hand whilst at the same time drawing more cards. There are a few that bounce the opponent's cards but still follow the same bounce format. Simple Deck Building Strategies *'Life Recovery/Void Bringers' - MAX 4 of each per deck. I would suggest 4 Life Recovery and 4 Void Bringers, having 4 increases your chance of getting them in your life and as a result pulling the ability off, also being an Ignition they will end up on the field one way or another. If your playing 2 or more colours and can't choose one Void/Life over another, just go with whatever is most pleasing to you, there is no condition to activating them other than having the same or less life than your opponent. *'Ignition Cards '- This is only really for those who play 2 or more colours, try to balance Ignition effects with each other, generally for a two colour deck I suggest 50/50. Single colours should focus more on effects and attack power than just effects. *'Abilities/Effects' - Keep a good balance between abilities. Abilities can help you out of a dire situation more often than raw power will, that said, this is a numbers game and raw power can help too sometimes. Balance is everything, a good deck will have a good balance between abilities and power. *'Cost '- This one is a little tricky as its more of a personal preference. Low VS High, Low cost units are good as you can play them early on and 'Mech Flood' the opponent, however whilst High cost cards take a while to come out, they usually are quite powerful and have good abilities (6000 damage anyone?). I suggest a number of 'middle cost' cards (4/5 cost) but the ratio of High cost and Low cost depends on the player and deck strategy. Mixing Colours Mixing colours is allowed. When mixing decks it's a good idea to keep in mind the following: *'BALANCE '- As with most card games that allow the mixing of 2 or more colours/clans/etc. balance is always a key issue. Decide on the colours you want and try and find what balance works for what you want to achieve. For example, if you wanted to make a Green/Black deck. You are best choosing cards that emphasize the strengths of the two colours (Green = resource, Black = destruction). So finding a balance between cards that will destroy the opponent (black) and cards that will be sent to Resource upon death (green) is your goal. Also finding a balance so you can pay costs is a must as having a handful of Black cards and a resource full of Green is not going to help you win. *'IGNITION '- This is both easier and harder to do. Ignitions require no conditions to activate, which is good. Conversely, having 2 or more colours in your deck INCREASES your Ignition pool to choose from. While this seems good it can be bad as you need to choose Ignitions wisely, playing on the strengths of the deck rather than just having big numbered Ignitions for the hell of it (Black players may I direct you to this card). *'ABILITIES '- This may seem redundant, but using cards with abilities that support the way the deck runs is imperative. A bad example would be having Rose Helmet Wild Rose in the deck and not having Easygoing Rurijissa. Here the problem is you're running a Green deck that excels in gathering resource and utilizing it. Wild Rose's ability requires you to have 9 or more resources to get +1000 (a 3 cost 5500 is great) and not having Rurijissa's ability to go to the resource upon death is going to mean that you can't get the numbers required to use the abilities to fully utilize the deck. Having colours that work together to make up for any inherent weaknesses are always a good choice. Examples: **Green/White, piles up resources so you can buff your cards during your opponent's turn to keep the alive. **Black/Red, Shoot opponent's cards for damage so your weaker Z/X can pick off any cards left over after destroying a majority of the opposition. **White/Blue, who doesn't like a full field of holy avengers? The Blue will add more and more cards to your hand and bounce (return to hand) any cards you don't like (yours and you opponent's) while the White fill up the board and stay there due to buff/debuff. Clans/Types Clans/Types refer to the bottom of the card that says "Braver"/"Angel"/Mermaid"/etc. At the moment very few cards emphasize this aspect of the game. With the release of E01 we should see more cards building around this. As it stands it is not possible to build a deck solely around the Clan/Type (I'm not saying its IMpossible just that making a deck based only around the "gigantic" archetype not only limits you in colour but also cards (not to mention Ignitions)). Extra Hints/Tips Practice, Practice, Practice. Playing games again and again not only help cement the rules, but you also encounter different scenarios allowing for different game play. It also helps you tweak your deck as a card that you thought was awesome might take too long to play and not last very long, whilst a card you threw in your deck for fun might turn out to have always had a hand in you winning. If this game looks interesting and you want to have a go but don't want to commit just yet, try one of the Free Decks available here. Instructions are simple: click the big button and wait for the PDF to download. Print the sheets, cut them out, find some standard Magic: The Gathering (or regular card game) sleeves, find some cardboard backing (I use spare Lands/Weiss Schwarz cards), and play away! Each PDF is 2 "half decks" (blue is the only exception) containing 10 Ignitions, 15 regular cards (25 cards total) and a Player card. If your friends and you want to play a 'proper' game, just throw the 2 half decks together, pick a Player card and a start card and play away. Any further Hints/Tips/Deck Building Q&A, feel free to post below!